Contents

Description

The ST-A2 is a Rank IV Japanese medium tank
with a battle rating of 6.3 (AB/RB/SB). It was introduced along with the initial Japanese Ground Forces tree in Update 1.65 "Way of the Samurai".

It is a sidegrade to ST-A1, which takes sniping duty as its main work while neglecting most of the other roles. One can literally treat them as the same tank, but they have some minor quality of life differences, which will be mentioned here.

General info

Survivability and armour

Armour on ST-A2 is about the same as ST-A1, but there are some differences to its weaknesses.

For instance, the hull is now raised to engine deck level and slope goes all the way up the turret, resulting in turret being well above engine deck. The frontal armour is even more angled now, with effective thickness of about 90-100 mm, but it now also connected to engine deck, and in connection spot it's about 80 mm effective thickness like before. Most of tanks can still penetrate entire armour with no issues, so overall on tank's own BR it changes only rear gun depression and ability of certain tanks to just explode the tank with HE when it's hulldown.

Since hull is raised higher, there is less chances that enemy APHE will hit driver optics on accident or will be stopped by transmission and won't destroy the tank. Also, gunner's head is now above gun breech, so random shrapnel has a chance of hitting him, if enemy shell explodes above it, resulting in complete crew knockout, unlike with ST-A1.

For the turret, the commander cupolas was raised a bit and the pintle-mounted machine gun was removed. Overall it makes it harder to destroy tank with HE, but nothing more. However, the turret neck is no longer a weak spot for SPAA to exploit, but tank can still be destroyed by SPAA firing at MG port because their shells still cause spalling or explode and hit ammo rack despite it being rotated away from the weakspot. Still, it will definitely take them longer to deal with the tank that way.

Ammo rack in back of the turret is now facing turret and is much narrower a target, so the gun breech shields it entirely. Because of that, as long as the ST-A2 fires off first two rounds in first-stage rack, the chances of tank exploding due to ammo rack being hit through the turret is reduced. It came at a price, though, as it is now even easier to shoot the tank from the side or back. The block outside of turret's back isn't even modeled, so if HESH hits back of the turret, it's going to explode the entire tank.

Mobility

The 3D mobility of this tank is the same as predecessor, as well as their effective off-road and top speed - about (AB/RB) 40/33 km/h forward and 18/15 km/h backwards off-road, with top speed being 50/45 forward and 20/17 backwards .

It is important to remember the earliest your enemy would have x16 scope is at a battle rating of 7.3/7.7 (AB/RB) with German Leopard I while even the SPG class tanks will most likely have an ~x6 or x8 at best.

Be aware when utilising guns which lack stabilizer, attempting to shoot on the move while viewing through x16 optics is almost a guaranteed miss due to the movement of the vehicle over the terrain. If needed to aim at targets on a move, do not change pace or make sudden changes as the gun will fire less predictably and most likely result in a miss.

Ammunition

Penetration statistics

Ammunition

Type of warhead

Penetrationin mm@ 0°

10m

100m

500m

1000m

1500m

2000m

M318 shot

AP

174

171

159

149

133

122

M71 shell

HE

13

13

13

13

13

13

M82 shot

APCBC

182

180

168

153

140

128

M304 shot

APCR

264

260

245

226

210

191

M332 shot

APCR

271

270

245

217

192

170

M348 shell

HEATFS

305

305

305

305

305

305

Shell details

Ammunition

Type of warhead

Velocity in m/s

ProjectileMass in kg

Fuse delay

in m:

Fuse sensitivity

in mm:

Explosive Mass in g (TNT equivalent):

Normalization At 30° from horizontal:

Ricochet:

0%

50%

100%

M318 shot

AP

853

11

N/A

N/A

N/A

+4°

47°

60°

65°

M71 shell

HE

823

11

0.1

0.5

925

+0°

79°

80°

81°

M82 shot

APCBC

853

11

1.2

20

137.2

+4°

48°

63°

71°

M304 shot

APCR

1021

7.6

N/A

N/A

N/A

+1.5°

66°

70°

72°

M332 shot

APCR

1178

5.6

N/A

N/A

N/A

+1.5°

66°

70°

72°

M348 shell

HEATFS

853

6.5

0.0

0.1

926.17

+0°

65°

72°

75°

Smoke characteristic

Ammunition

Velocity in m/s

ProjectileMass in kg

Screen radius in m

Screen time in s

Screen hold time in s:

Explosive Mass in g (TNT equivalent):

M313

821

11

13

5

20

50

Machine guns

The 12.7 mm M2HB machine gun was removed, so ST-A2 only has 7.62 mm M1919A4 in its turret. It still can be used to damage open-top SPG, but fighting light tanks with it is not possible. Planes are also harder to engage with it.

On other hand, its trajectory is similiar to APHE shell up to 760 m, so you can use it to check your aim in RB, if necessary, which further confirms sniper specialization of ST-A2.

Usage in battles

As before, it is required to stay out of sight and find a good, defensible spot on the map and use your current best ammunition to destroy enemy tanks from your effective range. Due to the armour still being completely inadequate for its BR, it's still recommended to snipe enemy either from afar (Preferably with HEAT-FS) or flank them and snipe from angles they don't really expect (again, the further away the better), using your superior optics.

It is also recommended to avoid rushing down super-light SPG and tanks like AUBL/74, as 7.62 mm MG will likely fail to destroy it in case if you miss, unlike 12.7 mm of predecessor.

Pros and cons

Pros:

Overall better sniper qualities than ST-A1 (but they only really matter in RB)

Can defend itself against other tanks in case of a rear flank, unlike ST-A1

Harder to hit ammo rack in turret from the front, and overall better protection against autocannons, HEAT and pure AP in turret

Harder to be destroyed by HE shot to the turret, can technically tank some attacker's plane assault with its front

Harder to destroy by poorly aimed shot in down-tier

Cons:

Worse against light tanks than predecessor due to lack of 12.7 mm MG

Still can be destroyed in one shot by nearly anything on battlefield via crew knockout, as long as they have APHE or HESH

Raised turret still cannot use certain hull down spots, but raises tank's profile

Hull weak spot is even more relevant now

History

Describe the history of the creation and combat usage of the ground vehicle in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too big, take it to a separate article, taking a link to the article about the vehicle and adding a block "/ History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(Vehicle-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article. This section may also include the vehicle's devblog entry (if applicable) and the ingame encyclopedia description (under === Encyclopedia Info ===, also if applicable).

Media

Excellent additions to the article would be video guides, screenshots from the game, and photos.

See also

Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example: